A plaque, which doesn’t detail the events surrounding his death, currently stands in front of a London plane tree near the park’s southwestern entrance.

“That plaque represents the neocolonialism of the day. It represents white supremacy,” said Lynn Jones on Wednesday.

“I think that it should be removed but not just for the sake of removal. I think it should be removed because people understand the atrocities of what has taken place.”

Learning about the plaque’s existence makes her wonder about the other people with questionable histories commemorated in the municipality, she said.

INSET: A military photograph (19740376-012) from the Canadian War Museum’s George Metcalf Archival Collection.

Courtesy: Canadian War Museum

Afua Cooper, the James Robinson Johnston Chair in Black Canadian Studies at Dalhousie University, said in a phone interview from Toronto that, given the era, she was not surprised to learn about Keating’s actions and his posthumous commemoration.

But societies have evolved, and “the plaque should be removed because the wording is sanitized,” she added.

If people want to remember him in this fashion, another plaque should be produced that presents “a more rounded story.”

Cooper said that problematic commemorations also extend to street names.

Stairs Street in the north end of the peninsula was named after Halifax’s William Grant Stairs, according to a spokesperson for the municipal government.

Cooper said the street should be renamed because, according to Yves Engler, the soldier committed atrocities, including mutilating bodies, cannibalism and engaging in sex slavery, against people in the Congo.

The plaque for the tree planted in 1899 in memory of Lt. Clonard Keating in the Halifax Public Gardens, pictured on Aug. 18, 2017

Steve Silva / Global News

“I think they’re distractions right now. Nobody has ever come to me about those issues before. This issue of Cornwallis has been around for a long time. It’s not an issue that’s going to go away, it has to be resolved one way or the other. If there are other cases that people can look at and research it and say that, ‘You know, we’re commemorating a person who we shouldn’t,’ then we’ll look at it. But, to me, that’s a bit of a distraction,” said Halifax Mayor Mike Savage.

He added that his current focus is the use of Halifax founder Edward Cornwallis’ name on municipal assets.

WATCH: Cornwallis dispute hits Halifax council again

District 9 Coun. Shawn Cleary brought forward this year’s motion on the matter.

“One of the really great things in all of this is, by seeing these, and then going and researching them, we’re re-learning or we’re, in a lot of cases, just simply learning about our history and how we celebrate that, and whether or not it should be celebrated, whether it should be honoured,” he said.

Cleary said the plaque doesn’t compare at the moment to the magnitude of issues stemming from the statue, but it is worth exploring.

The issues surrounding how historical figures are publicly commemorated is being faced by other North American communities.